Matthew 24:14

Note

The disciples ask when the temple will fall and what the sign of the end will be. Jesus speaks first of persecution and falling away, and in the middle of it all He sets this promise: before the end, the gospel goes to every nation.

On the Mount of Olives the disciples come privately: "when will these things happen, and what will be the sign of Your coming and of the end of the age?" (Matthew 24:3). Jesus warns of deceivers, wars and famines, and then of what will fall on them: "you will be hated by all nations because of My name" (Matthew 24:9). Many will fall away and love will grow cold, but "the one who perseveres to the end will be saved" (Matthew 24:13). This verse follows at once. The nations that will hate the disciples are the same nations that will hear the gospel.

The noun euangelion is the subject of a future passive, kēruchthēsetai, "will be preached." The verse does not say who will preach it, and a passive of this kind is often read as pointing quietly to God as the one who brings it about. The demonstrative "this" ties the promise to the message Jesus had been preaching in Galilee (4:23; 9:35): not some later or larger gospel, but this one. "All the world" is oikoumenē, the whole inhabited earth, and "as a testimony" is marturion, evidence laid before someone. The final "then" (tote) fixes the order: first the gospel, then the end.

The versions differ only in idiom. The KJV says the gospel "shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations"; the BSB has "as a testimony"; the LSV, "for a testimony to all the nations," and it renders the noun "good news" and the verb "proclaimed." "Witness" and "testimony" are the same Greek word: the preaching itself is set before the nations as evidence, which they may receive or refuse.

What "the end" means has been read two ways. Wesley takes it as the end "of the city and temple" Wesley, and in the Catena Chrysostom argues that the gospel had reached everywhere before Jerusalem fell, offering as the strongest proof of Christ's power "that in thirty years or a little more, the word of the Gospel filled the ends of the world" Chrysostom. Jerome reads the verse as the sign of the Lord's second coming, and Augustine, writing that there was no certain evidence the apostles had finished the task, concludes that the end "shall not be before such time" Augustine. The Catena's gloss holds both readings together, and Matthew Henry puts it simply: "The end of the world shall not be till the gospel has done its work" Matthew Henry.

Wesley calls Josephus's history of the Jewish War the best commentary on this chapter. That same history records that, in the middle of that war, Vespasian's accession went out as "good news," euangelia, Josephus, Jewish War 4.618, 4.656. The empire too sent its good news around the world, and it was the accession of a new emperor. The gospel of the kingdom announces another King.

Jesus set no date for the end, but He named what must come before it, and whoever hears this news today, in any language, is among the nations He named.